You read a passage that obviously the author is extremely positive of and the questions like "What is the authors tone of the idea in the 3rd paragraph?"

A) Optimistic B) SupportiveC) Opposed D) EncouragingE) Hopeful

Like wtf 4 of those mean almost the same fucking thing. Those should be the easiest questions in the world but I fucking always miss them

Lol I feel ya. Also, logical reasoning answers from the initial practice tests and the modern ones are inconsistent in what the best answer is for necessary assumptions. One answer was definitely a premise booster/restater and yet it was claimed to be the 'necessary assumption.' Umm it was already stated in the stimulus...it isn't necessary; it's taken as a fact. /end rant

cite? there is an NA question in superprep-b test that is wrong but I don't think there is any in the modern PTs.

You read a passage that obviously the author is extremely positive of and the questions like "What is the authors tone of the idea in the 3rd paragraph?"

A) Optimistic B) SupportiveC) Opposed D) EncouragingE) Hopeful

Like wtf 4 of those mean almost the same fucking thing. Those should be the easiest questions in the world but I fucking always miss them

Lol I feel ya. Also, logical reasoning answers from the initial practice tests and the modern ones are inconsistent in what the best answer is for necessary assumptions. One answer was definitely a premise booster/restater and yet it was claimed to be the 'necessary assumption.' Umm it was already stated in the stimulus...it isn't necessary; it's taken as a fact. /end rant

cite? there is an NA question in superprep-b test that is wrong but I don't think there is any in the modern PTs.

Preptest 3, Section 4, Question 19. The credited answer is D, but in a similar question nowadays that would be incorrect IMO. The credited response in the vast majority of questions would be A. I think it's a bad question. I normally would really try to get into the details of why they chose that answer, but I think with a question from this long ago, that would just screw up with my thinking for 99% of the questions which I would otherwise get right.

berkeleynick wrote:Lol I feel ya. Also, logical reasoning answers from the initial practice tests and the modern ones are inconsistent in what the best answer is for necessary assumptions. One answer was definitely a premise booster/restater and yet it was claimed to be the 'necessary assumption.' Umm it was already stated in the stimulus...it isn't necessary; it's taken as a fact. /end rant

cite? there is an NA question in superprep-b test that is wrong but I don't think there is any in the modern PTs.

Preptest 3, Section 4, Question 19. The credited answer is D, but in a similar question nowadays that would be incorrect IMO. The credited response in the vast majority of questions would be A. I think it's a bad question. I normally would really try to get into the details of why they chose that answer, but I think with a question from this long ago, that would just screw up with my thinking for 99% of the questions which I would otherwise get right.

the credited answer will still be correct today. why do you think it's not necessary? A is not an NA - the experience gained from pvt sector may not be valuable to any extent to government functioning and the argument will still hold. note that they are recapturing the capable admins who worked in government before, so even if the experience they gained in private sector amounts to zero value, the functioning of public agencies can still improve if they rejoined. there is only one good answer, which is also the best answer.

The sentence "government will be able to recapture these capable administrators by raising salaries" indicates D to be true. Therefore D cannot be an "assumption" made by the argument; it's stated as a matter of fact. It states definitively that the government will be able to recapture these administrators. The fact that the government will be able to recapture the administrators isn't the conclusion of the argument, because it's this sentence which is used to support the final sentence, which is the overall conclusion ("public agencies will improve [with their rehiring]".

The assumption would be that these people, whom we've already agreed would be recaptured by the government, would somehow "improve" the government with their rehiring. This to me indicated that there's some value/benefit with their rehiring that otherwise would not exist - perhaps it's the private sector experience they've recently gleaned via their departure. That's how I saw it.

I understand why D is the credited answer, I just dont think it's an assumption, whereas A is one, and it makes sense with the argument. That's why I elminated D and chose A as the best answer within what I think is a crappy set of answers with a crappy question.

berkeleynick wrote:The sentence "government will be able to recapture these capable administrators by raising salaries" indicates D to be true. Therefore D cannot be an "assumption" made by the argument; it's stated as a matter of fact. It states definitively that the government will be able to recapture these administrators. The fact that the government will be able to recapture the administrators isn't the conclusion of the argument, because it's this sentence which is used to support the final sentence, which is the overall conclusion.

The assumption would be that these people, whom we've already agreed would be recaptured by the government, would somehow add value/benefit the government by being recaptured from the private sector. I think D today would be an incorrect answer today because it's simply restating what's already been stated as true in the stimulus. It isn't assuming anything. That's a very, very common wrong answer in NA questions.

I understand why D is the credited answer, I just think that D would be a wrong answer in questions today. The word 'improved' indicates to me that there's some value/benefit that was not there before with their rehiring, perhaps the private sector experience. That's how I saw it.

you raise an interesting point. i think what you're saying is that "government will be able to recapture these capable administrators by raising salaries" states D as a matter of fact. it does not; it assumes it. the quoted sentence "government will be ....salaries" has a intermediate conclusion "govt will be able to recapture these capable admins" and a premise "by raising salaries." You need to add an assumption that the admins will choose to move back to government again from private sector to arrive at this intermediate conclusion. so D is an assumption necessary to arrive at this intermediate conclusion in the quoted sentence.

there is a fine line between what's stated as a fact and presupposition in this example. in real world and among logic theorists, i think this would be a matter of interpretation. lsat i think however has been pretty consistent in their take on such arguments.

for crappy questions, imo 66 LR2 Q23 is one of the most crappy questions. even for an mss question the credited answer is all implied never really supported.

So I've heard people using sections from old PT's that they haven't seen in a very long time as experimentals. But what do you guys think about adding an experimental on your PT that you've never seen before? I have 60-72 as fresh PT's and I'll usually add in either RC or LR as a 5th section, but since I've seen everything up till 59, I'm thinking about using a section from one of my fresh PT's as an experimental. So for example when writing PT 60, I'll be using a section out of 61.

evolution wrote:So I've heard people using sections from old PT's that they haven't seen in a very long time as experimentals. But what do you guys think about adding an experimental on your PT that you've never seen before? I have 60-72 as fresh PT's and I'll usually add in either RC or LR as a 5th section, but since I've seen everything up till 59, I'm thinking about using a section from one of my fresh PT's as an experimental. So for example when writing PT 60, I'll be using a section out of 61.

Thoughts?

Then what are you going to do when you get to 61? Take two sections from PT 62?

I just use my workbooks to put together sections that I've never seen before (like I'll do all the RC from PT 24, or all the LG from PT 30, just something random like that.)

It's more about endurance than anything else with the experimental section. The only downside is that I know its the experimental, but I don't see that as a huge problem. That said, I was thinking about using June as the experimental for my last four PTs...

evolution wrote:So I've heard people using sections from old PT's that they haven't seen in a very long time as experimentals. But what do you guys think about adding an experimental on your PT that you've never seen before? I have 60-72 as fresh PT's and I'll usually add in either RC or LR as a 5th section, but since I've seen everything up till 59, I'm thinking about using a section from one of my fresh PT's as an experimental. So for example when writing PT 60, I'll be using a section out of 61.

Thoughts?

This is something that I generally recommend for my students that want to complete all the 50s and 60s before test day, but don't have enough weeks left to reasonably do that many separate exams (alongside thorough review, etc).

You've got to plan it in advance, though. So, perhaps PT 61 gets chopped up, and when you do 62, 63, 64, and 65, you'll put one section from PT 61 in each.

Or, if you are doing 6 section exams for endurance, one exam might be 60 and 2 sections from 61, then the next exam might be 62 and the remaining two sections from 61.

Using moderns for experimentals has a few benefits: 1) it allows you to touch all the new material in a shorter time frame without resorting to PTing w/o review (obviously, you don't want to do this when you're long on time and *short* on fresh material)2) Every experimental MATTERS. Even if you're not scoring it right this second, you'll be scoring it as soon as you have all the sections from that exam finished, so it still *counts*. This makes us a lot less likely to slack off during the experimental, so it becomes a bit less important to artificially mix up the sections so as to hide the truth from yourself.

I recommend getting out a calendar and jotting down when you plan to take each remaining PT from here to test day.

berkeleynick wrote:The sentence "government will be able to recapture these capable administrators by raising salaries" indicates D to be true. Therefore D cannot be an "assumption" made by the argument; it's stated as a matter of fact. It states definitively that the government will be able to recapture these administrators. The fact that the government will be able to recapture the administrators isn't the conclusion of the argument, because it's this sentence which is used to support the final sentence, which is the overall conclusion ("public agencies will improve [with their rehiring]".

The assumption would be that these people, whom we've already agreed would be recaptured by the government, would somehow "improve" the government with their rehiring. This to me indicated that there's some value/benefit with their rehiring that otherwise would not exist - perhaps it's the private sector experience they've recently gleaned via their departure. That's how I saw it.

I understand why D is the credited answer, I just dont think it's an assumption, whereas A is one, and it makes sense with the argument. That's why I elminated D and chose A as the best answer within what I think is a crappy set of answers with a crappy question.

D would still be credited today. Negate D. Sometimes the people who changed from govt to private will not be willing to change careers again. Ok, if that's the case, then the govt will not be able to recapture these individuals. Half the time TCR on NA qs are self-evident, such that the TCR just ensures that the argument posited in the stimulus actually is true.

Also, A is wrong because there's a scope change between the stimulus and A. What's the relationship between the experience being valuable and the functioning of these public agencies being improved? You have to make the assumption in A that value=improvement.

August/September, November/December, and January/February are our busiest months at work. Not even kidding. Why did I not take this damn test in June? Working 12 hours during the weekdays. Really afraid about this month. I am dedicated to doing the minimum at work until Sept 27, but the minimum is still too much for my schedule to incorporate studying enough.